Monday, May 18, 2009

Women and the History of Computing

Women have been involved in computing from very near the beginning of the devices we'd call a modern computer.

Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, understood the implications of Babbage's Analytical Engine probably better than Babbage himself. The world might be very different had she not died at a tragically early age.

For a time, alas, "computers" were the people stationed at ten-key calculators grinding through numerical calculations, and women certainly occupied many of those positions.

Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper was the first programmer of the Harvard Mark I, wrote the first compiler, and was instrumental in the design of COBOL. (COBOL is, to say the least, not highly esteemed these days, but you have to remember its historical context to realize just how much of an advance it was in its time.) The Navy needed her expertise so badly that her first two retirements each lasted all of a year.

Jean Sammet was also highly involved in the development of COBOL, but will forever be known for her monumental book comparing and analyzing the programming languages of the late 1960s and before.

If you use languages with iterators (e.g. Icon, Python, C++) or object-oriented languages that constrain inheritance in accordance with the Liskov Substitution Principle, then you have Barbara Liskov to thank.

When you crank up the optimization level on your compiles or watch both CPU cores grinding away on a parallelizable problem, you have Frances Allen to thank for her pioneering work in those fields.

OK, VLSI design isn't the same as programming, but you may know about Jeri Ellsworth, self-taught in the field, responsible for a couple of remakes of the C-64.

That's a short list, but OTOH, a list of men of similar stature wouldn't be very long either. Not all women in computing are Grace Hoppers or Frances Allens, but darned few men in computing are Alan Turings, Edsger Dijkstras, John Backuses, or Tony Hoares either.